Now we're singin' from the same sheet of music...
I honestly don't know enough about the relationships of French manufacturers with the revolving-door governments and ministers in France through the 20s and 30s- you may well be right about the political corruption, God knows everything ELSE was screwed up in the French halls of power at that time. My impression, though, is that the manufacturers were largely left to their own devices when it came to devising and building aircraft to accomplish a certain role because frankly there was never a government or minister in place long enough to come up with any sort of long-term program other than the fabled Maginot Line- which also nearly bankrupted the country in the course of it's construction. That's why we got things like the Potez 540 push-pull bomber, the Amiot 143 "bus", the underpowered and dangerously unstable Potez biplane fighters (a bunch went to Poland and they hated them), etc... just a whole host of seemingly inexplicable designs that never seemed to meet any goal particularly well. It wasn't until the late 30s, when France seemed to realize "Oh crap, maybe this Hitler whackjob is serious!" that they seemed to get any traction on capable modern warplane designs but of course by that point, it was too late.
As to your other comments, I always suspected there was something exceedingly screwy with how the F-104 got into Luftwaffe service but I had no idea it was as bad as you report. I do know about the B-35/B-49 versus the B-36 travesty though, and of course the infamous Avro CF-105 Arrow. You are absolutely correct, corporate and governmental malfeasance is hardly new, and Brewster, while obviously deficient, is far from the worst example of it. The more I think about it, the more I think this would make for a particularly interesting book... not Brewster specifically, but just an overview of the role backroom politics and malfeasance has played in aircraft acquisition programs. It would probably never be allowed to get off the ground, though- too many high-powered people would stand to be publicly embarrassed by such an effort. (adjusts tinfoil hat slightly)
Cheers, and thanks for the interesting commentary-
Lynn